Minnie Chase Makes a Mistake Read online

  Minnie relaxed too and tucked into the food. She just had to get through dessert, then she could go home and surprise her husband-to-be. Being sent home early suddenly seemed a bonus, not a snub. It was just a relief to get through the evening. Even A.A Jones managed a few mouthfuls of food and the corner of her mouth turned up occasionally hinting at a smile even although the rest of her face was set like stone.

  Yes, thought Minnie, perhaps Greene was a little nervous. He didn’t touch a drop of alcohol and didn’t seem to eat much either. Minnie got the feeling that this was someone who didn’t relish the spotlight quite as much as his formidable fiancée. He probably just wanted to retreat to the quiet luxury somewhere upstairs and order room service.

  Minnie didn’t usually drink much alcohol either but, as she reflected on the months and months of hard work and overtime that had gone into this deal, she decided that maybe a small glass of wine would finalise her efforts. Minnie had stuck to water all night but now felt safe enough to make the switch to the Chardonnay. The wine was exceptional. Hugging the glass, she sat back in her seat and let the buzz of conversation bounce off the chandeliers and ricochet around the room. She accepted a refill and the tension began to leave her shoulders.

  She tilted her head towards the ceiling and reflected on her job. She loved it – mathematician and financial adviser at Jones & Sword.

  Then Ashton Greene turned to his left and addressed her directly. His voice low but authoritative.

  ‘Miranda, you have been heavily involved in this natural gas project, yes?’

  She could detect a nervousness in his voice or something not quite right. Minnie snapped upright and slid her glass back onto the table. She was surprised he remembered her name. She said, ‘Team effort, actually.’

  ‘Hmm. I’ve gone through the reports. There is still a significant issue I would like to discuss with you.’

  Minnie stared at him. The teeniest tremor in his right hand also belied his confident manner.

  He smiled, encouragingly. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Parkinson’s,’ blurted Minnie, swivelling around in her seat to face him.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Greene looked utterly horrified.

  Nervous tension and a surge of alcohol had ignited an idea in Minnie’s head. ‘I know a brilliant mathematician who has developed state-of-the-art voice recognition software.’ She leaned towards Greene, earnest and enthusiastic, warming to her subject. ‘You simply speak into a custom-made telephone and it can detect the early onset of Parkinson’s. It is truly amazing technology. I’m so excited about it. I have his number… the guy you need to speak to…’ Minnie dived under the table to retrieve her handbag and rummaged around for her phone. ‘Hold on a sec… what am I doing?’ She made a face-palm gesture. ‘I can remember his number.’ She stopped scrolling through her contacts. ‘He’ll explain it so much better…’

  A snow storm of silence threw a blanketed hush over the entire table. It hit Minnie like an avalanche. As her head jerked up, she realised it was too late to save herself or Greene for that matter. Everyone was looking at them including a shell-shocked Parker Bachmann who was gripping a steak knife in such a way that Minnie expected her to hurl it at her; a twisted circus act with Minnie nailed to a spinning wheel while the glamorous American threw daggers at her.

  Dear God, thought Minnie. What have I done? A.A Jones actually looked as though she had died as the result of a vampire attack. There was a deathly bloodless sheen to her skin as she perspired under the lights. She wouldn’t have looked out of place in an open casket in a chapel of rest. Her lips had turned blue. Then she suddenly clutched her throat in the manner of someone who had developed an extreme hypersensitivity to the shellfish on her plate. She started jerking violently while remaining completely silent.

  ‘Of course…’ babbled Minnie, turning to address the table as Parker Bachmann had done so commandingly moments ago. Stillness, a stunned silence. She reverted to crisis management action, ‘… this is not to say…’ she laughed a touch hysterically, ‘that you…’

  She now turned to face Greene to assuage his fears, desperately backtracking to dismiss her sweeping assumption on his health.

  There would never be a more pertinent time to beg, lie and grovel.

  But the pertinent time was not now. The seat next to her had been swiftly vacated. Greene was gone.

  2

  Into the night

  There was a scuffled panic as the Greene team frantically tried to ascertain the whereabouts of their boss. Then two security men swooped on Minnie. As their iron fingers locked onto her arms she let out an undignified screech, like a gull falling out of the sky. On Parker Bachmann’s curt instruction they frogmarched Minnie away from the table, almost carrying her from the dining room. Once outside she was dumped, unceremoniously, next to a row of enormous black plant pots big enough to hold trees.

  ‘Oweeeeeeeeeee,’ she squealed painfully as she was shoved, roughly, in the direction of the uniformed doorman. He firmly pushed her towards the rank of waiting black cabs, handling her quickly as though she were toxic waste.

  The message was quite clear: no one upsets Mr Greene. She probably wasn’t even allowed to talk directly to him without written permission from a buzz-cut general at the head of Dragonet security.

  Hot evening air lazily ballooned around Minnie’s heels as she lurched past the taxis and tottered away from The Savoy. London was oblivious to Minnie’s hideous exchange with one of America’s leading men who featured on the annual rich lists around the world.

  The rich, buttery meal she had eaten earlier now bombed to the bottom of her stomach. She felt nauseous and quickly slowed to a walking pace in an attempt to regulate her breathing.

  Etiquette experts acknowledge that, ‘think before you speak’ is a fundamental law in any conversation. Minnie, however, had experienced a sudden rush of words to the head and shared an opinion that was both professionally and socially out of place.

  Once a safe distance away from The Savoy, she came to an abrupt halt and wrenched off her dizzyingly high shoes.

  What the hell was I thinking? She thought. What just happened in there?

  The minute Greene had started talking to her Minnie had realised that something was not quite right. Perhaps he suspected it too but she could tell that her off-the-cuff diagnosis had shocked the hell out of him as much as it had the other diners. She had maybe even confirmed his worst fears.

  Standing in her stockinged feet on the pavement while London partied around her, blissfully unaware of her turmoil, Minnie finally managed to get it together sufficiently to hail a black cab and head home.

  Tomorrow she would face the wrath of A.A Jones, the woman who apparently knew Minnie better than Minnie knew herself: a brilliant embarrassment.

  At least one person would be pleased to see her. James George, Minnie’s beloved husband-to-be was having a quiet night at home watching his favourite TV show about part-android humans. Minnie had met him online through the geek2geek.com dating agency. Six months after their first tentative date, the wedding date had been decided.

  James George immediately connected with Minnie. He was impressed not intimidated by her razor sharp mind and didn’t seemed fazed in the slightest that she was quirky by nature. She was equally impressed with him – a 3D Graphic Artist with degrees in Mathematics and Quantitative Economics. He was also co-founder of Row Reduction, a start-up super computer group that was going from strength to strength.

  James George wouldn’t be able to erase the awfulness of the evening at The Savoy but he might help to ease the hideousness of it through reassurance and support. Minnie could still see Greene’s shocked expression when she had mentioned Parkinson’s – a bombshell moment when someone suggests you might have a serious neurological disease.

  She walked through the silent living room feeling awful, a sensation that worsened as soon as she realised she was home alone. James George must have stayed late at the office because the te
levision was off and the place was depressingly dark and deserted. Minnie flung herself onto the sofa and sat brooding in the gloom. She wanted to wipe the evening’s events from the history books but it felt like a film projector had fired up in her head replaying a flickering slow-motion version of the hideous dinner at The Savoy. She dropped her head into her hands desperately willing it to stop.

  Then, suddenly, she heard what sounded like voices on a television in another room or a sound of something muffled behind closed doors. Minnie had never been so thankful when she realised James George wasn’t out after all. Padding silently across the polished wooden floorboards in her stockinged feet she flung open the bedroom door to see the grand finale to her evening horribilis.

  Dusk had cast a deep purplish light over the bedroom while shadow-shapes created a ghoulish atmosphere that befitted the scene – it was cult horror-movie stuff. Minnie saw flailing limbs and wild zombie eyes glazed to an unseeing sheen while two heads thrashed together on sateen pillows. Deep moaning and grunting was accompanied by terrible high-pitched squeals that somehow sounded more shocking than screams. The acoustics in the high-ceilinged room made the sounds even louder.

  Minnie’s mouth took on a strange metallic taste. The horrible incessant squealing set her teeth on edge. As her eyes adjusted to the shadows, the unfolding horror in front of her made her feel dizzy and she stretched a hand out to the wall to stop herself from keeling over. The earth moved. Or at least something shifted beneath her feet.

  She saw James George, the man she loved more strongly than she had ever imagined it was possible to love. But he appeared to have been possessed by the devil. He was rolling and writhing around, naked limbs glistening with a satanic slick of sweat. Minnie could hear the slobbering sound of human lips smacking feverishly together. Her husband-to-be had been bewitched by a peroxide blonde Medusa with hair extensions that swirled and curled down to her waist. She had incredibly cute cupcake breasts that didn’t move even though she cavorted and bounced like a gold-medal Olympic gymnast. She also had long, slender legs as flexible as pipe cleaner that stretched and pointed and flicked. So supremely athletic. So unlike Minnie.

  James’s tongue, meanwhile, was licking and slurping, intently working over the Medusa’s skin as if he was frantically trying to devour a melting ice cream under the midday sun.

  Minnie shut her eyes for a second. She opened them again slowly but the nightmare scenario was still there. It was real and she screamed out once, ferociously, so loudly that she felt her ears pop, a high altitude, low oxygen experience.

  She stood in the shadows and screamed again and then again, a continuous escalating screech like a construction yard drill trying to bite into hardened metal. This tremendous scream had the power to break the Medusa spell over Minnie’s bed. The bodies sprang apart like a lightning strike splitting a long-dead tree trunk. Theatrical horror was frozen on the faces of the two people who suddenly realised that they had been caught in the act.

  Minnie’s ferocious scream began to run out of power and emotion and she croaked to the finish, hand over her throat to finally deaden the vibrations. The bodies in the bed frantically scooted backwards to put distance between themselves and Minnie. A crumpled sheet was hastily lifted as though a serious medical procedure was taking place behind it on the pillows.

  ‘Christ, Minnie?’ croaked James George. His disbelief was tangible, it was as though she’d risen from the dead after a decade-long absence.

  ‘James?’ whispered Minnie, voice hoarse. The tension in her knees unlocked and she slid down the wall and landed with a thump on the bedroom floor. She didn’t say another word knowing there was no possible answer to the question that had just died on her lips.

  James George started to inch his way to the edge of the bed, fingers splayed over his bare crotch as he frantically scanned the floor for clothing. Then he sprang from the mattress like a springbok and tugged on his underpants as fast as humanly possible, practically jumping in with both legs at once. Minnie eyed him bitterly as she curled up tighter into a ball on the floor.

  ‘What are you doing home?’ he yelped. There was a faint trace of accusation that Minnie didn’t miss. Just brilliant – this was her fault. If she hadn’t left The Savoy earlier than planned, this naked performance of lust and betrayal would have gone unwitnessed and uninterrupted.

  She narrowed her eyes, furious and bereft.

  ‘Minnie, look… I can explain…’

  But realising that the events were explanation enough he failed to deliver the end of the sentence. He paused and then crossed his arms across his chest and stood, with his hands jammed under his armpits, shivering even though the summer night was warm.

  She had certainly ruined the moment for her double-crossing husband-to-be. Minnie considered her options. She could fight for this love or leave in devastation.

  Minnie watched from the floor, she saw that James George had now taken a scatter-gun approach to dressing and was grabbing whatever clothes he could find and was dragging them on. Medusa did not move a muscle, she simply watched with a slack mouth and eyes wide.

  The fight had suddenly gone out of Minnie. She heaved herself up from the floor, shaky on her feet, and backed out of the room. Then she turned and ran. James George cantered after her, hot on her heels, and grabbed at her as she reached the front door. Minnie somehow escaped and spun away from him, slithery in her black taffeta dress.

  ‘Wait!’ shouted James George as he watched her race into the night. ‘Stop! Minnie! I love you!’

  3

  Worst fears

  Minnie launched herself from the house and into the night. She sprinted like she was possessed, still shoeless and now shivering feverishly. She was trussed up in a cocktail dress with a fluttering train that had turned to a jet propellant whoosh. She was a missile on a zero deviation trajectory to get her precisely to her target. To Angie’s house. Safe house.

  Angie was Minnie’s best friend. They had grown up together and now lived two streets away from each other in south west London. Angie had set up a thriving business called Howl Couture, which specialised in animal accessories. Selling bling and bespoke blazers for pampered pets was a lucrative business. Minnie knew this to be a fact because she had set up the e-commerce side of Howl Couture and was astonished how much money people paid for dog collars encrusted with jewels and other glittering additions to their spoilt pet’s wardrobe. Angie was raking in the cash, which helped fund her passion for rescuing and rehousing abandoned animals. The business-from-her-bedroom situation suited Angie because it allowed her to be a stay-at-home mum to a menagerie of waifs and strays.

  Minnie ran even faster when she saw Angie’s front door. James George’s parting words were disappearing, engulfed by the night. Minnie tried to hang onto them but they were already beginning to fade. Meaningless words that would break down in the earth’s atmosphere and vanish forever.

  Angie answered the door with a cat draped around her neck; a breathing fur stole that eyed Minnie with haughty feline resentment. Angie had similarly transfixing green eyes but hers were warm and welcoming. Her curly, cauldron-black hair was marvellously dishevelled as though Minnie had caught her sleeping like a bat.

  ‘Minnie! Oh!’ exclaimed Angie, snapping out of a doze-dazed state.

  She didn’t need to ask if there was something wrong. Minnie’s expression said it all: help me… save me.

  Angie reacted like Minnie had taken a flesh wound from a firearm. She quickly hauled her into the house and slammed the door. Once she was confident that her friend could breathe without assistance she ushered Minnie down the corridor into a living room that was swarming with a horde of curious cats and dogs. Angie, foster person for abandoned animals, had a home that was a welcoming sanctuary for four-legged friends and, in Minnie’s case, two-legged friends in need. Rescue operation on all levels. The house possessed the distinct aroma of cat’s pee and patchouli – a curious combination that shouldn’t have worked but Minnie fo
und it reassuringly comforting. She associated the smell with Angie, who, according to circumstances, was Minnie’s sidekick or her saviour and always her faithful best friend.

  ‘Angie,’ cried Minnie, collapsing onto a huge, squashy sofa upholstered in a bright butterfly pattern. She wrapped her arms tightly across her chest. ‘Oh!’

  ‘Ohmydeargod! What is it?’ cried Angie panicking. ‘Tell me where it hurts.’ She grabbed Minnie’s ankles, heaving them up onto the sofa until her friend assumed a horizontal position.

  Minnie started talking but she could only manage a jumble of words interspersed with a series of fits and gasps. Angie shrugged off her cat stole and was on the verge of checking Minnie’s airways. Minnie tried again to regurgitate the story but, hyperventilating, the best she could do was keep repeating isolated words and disjointed phrases.

  ‘Stop. Slow down. Wait. STOP! Hold on…’ pleaded Angie. ‘Calm down, Minnie. I don’t know what is going on. Breathe… more… another one… that’s it, that’s better, just take your time.’

  Minnie pulled a cushion over her face, her voice became a mumble from behind the velvet tapestry. Then she sat up. ‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ she said.

  Minnie sat with a large dog bowl on her lap. It was the first thing Angie could get her hands on when Minnie announced she was going to throw up.

  The blood abruptly drained down to Minnie’s feet and dizziness set in; nausea loves company.

  Then Minnie started to babble, making no sense.